Motivational Quotes

Death

We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning.

- Manilius, Marcus

Best Quotes about Death

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

Hazlitt, William

That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.

Cicero, Marcus T.

The grave's a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.

Marvell, Andrew

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.

Fromm, Erich

For 'Tis not in mere death that men die most.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

A man's death makes everything certain about him. Of course, secrets may die with him. And of course, a hundred years later somebody looking through some papers may discover a fact which throws a totally different light on his life and of which all the people who attended his funeral were ignorant. Death changes the facts qualitatively but not quantitatively. One does not know more facts about a man because he is dead. But what one already knows hardens and becomes definite. We cannot hope for ambiguities to be clarified, we cannot hope for further change, we cannot hope for more. We are now the protagonists and we have to make up our minds.

Berger, John

He would make a lovely corpse.

Dickens, Charles

Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred --it installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death is the greatest assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the dropsy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust --the finer and more ethereal part mounts with winged spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.

Hazlitt, William

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.

Cocteau, Jean

10.

Death does determine life. Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is suspended and therefore ambiguous. However, to be sincere I must add that for me death is important only if it is not justified and rationalized by reason. For me death is the maximum of epicness and death.

Pasolini, Pier Paolo

11.

Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.

Melville, Herman

12.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Hauer, Rutger

13.

If life must not be taken too seriously -- then so neither must death.

Butler, Samuel

14.

It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it.

KuBler-Ross, Elisabeth

15.

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.

Butler, Samuel

16.

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

Plato

17.

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

Eliot, George

18.

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

Mark Twain

19.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Hesse, Hermann

20.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow. Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

Donne, John

21.

Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.

Browne, Sir Thomas

22.

Death is the final wake-up call.

Horton, Doug

23.

If you don't think your life is worth more than someone else's, sign your donor card and kill yourself now.

Matthew V. Lewis

24.

Death never takes the wise man by surprise, he is always ready to go.

La Fontaine, Jean De

25.

So every bondman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity.

William Shakespeare

26.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Steve Jobs

27.

The essential part of our being can only survive if the transient part dissolves. Death is a condition of survival. That which has been gained must be eternalized, and can only be eternalized by being transmuted, by passing through death they must return

Khan, Pir Vilayat

28.

If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

29.

As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: so man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. [Job 14:11-12]

Bible

30.

It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.

Woody Allen

31.

He had been, he said, an unconscionable time dying; but he hoped that they would excuse it.

Charles II

32.

Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you.

Allen, Fred A.

33.

When a great man dies, for years the light he leaves behind him, lies on the paths of men.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

34.

I don't believe in an after life, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

Allen, Woody

35.

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.

Chandler, Raymond

36.

The difficulty about all this dying, is that you can't tell a fellow anything about it, so where does the fun come in?

James, Alice

37.

Dying is something we human beings do continuously, not just at the end of our physical lives on this earth.

KuBler-Ross, Elisabeth

38.

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

39.

I stay a little longer, as one stays, to cover up the embers that still burn.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

40.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? [1 Corinthians 15:55]

Bible

41.

Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit may swell.

Beecher, Henry Ward

42.

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

Camus, Albert

43.

When I have fears that I may cease to be, Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain.

Keats, John

44.

I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwreck, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.

Donne, John

45.

As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus

46.

Yet nightly pitch my moving tent, a day's march nearer home.

Montgomery, James

47.

To be born free is an accident; To live free a responsibility; To die free is an obligation.

Davis, Mrs Hubbard

48.

He whom the Gods love dies young, while he is in health, has his senses and his judgments sound.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

49.

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearances.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

50.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

Bacon, Francis